Stories to Live By

I will tell you something about stories...
They aren't just entertainment. Don't be fooled.
They are all we have, you see, all we have to fight off illness
and death...
Their evil is mighty but it can't stand up to our stories.
So they try to destroy the stories, let the stories be confused
or forgotten...
Because we would be defenseless then...

It is an open question whether the Bible's status in Western
civilization has improved much since the last millennium's
turning. Now, as then, it continues to provide grist for popular
eschatological fantasy, self-serving rulers still too often cite
it for political gain, and it remains overly captive to the
interpretive authority of the clerical and academic elite.

Two important things have changed since 1000 C.E., however. On
one hand, the advent of the printing press and the slow triumph
of the vernacular in the church have meant that the Bible is
widely accessible. On the other, since the Enlightenment the
forces of modernity have steadily displaced the Bible to the
cultural margins.

In North America, some Christians lament this latter fact,
while others accept it as preferable. The Bible is still the most
widely translated piece of literature around the world, yet
gathers dust on the shelves of most modern Western homes. It
continues to be both overexposed and misunderstood, fetishized by
some and maligned by others, invoked in the culture wars and
ignored in everyday life.

Despite all this, the old stories of scripture have survived
every attempt to dismiss, banish, deconstruct, or enshrine them.
And they continue to demonstrate the power to comfort the
afflicted, to afflict the comfortable, and to fire the
imaginations of poor people around the world. Why? Perhaps it is
because sacred narratives are as indigenous to human societies as
language itself. They help order, interpret, and change the
world.

The Bible was originally the integrating sacred story of
Hebrew tribes, then the charter for the Israelite nation. It was
embraced (and expanded) by the early Christian movement, and
eventually adoptedif sometimes at the point of the
swordby the expanding civilization of Christendom. But in
the modern era these stories have been largely abandoned as
"myth and superstition," and replaced with the brave
new narratives of technological triumphalism, managerial
rationalism, and capitalist Progress.

In the First World we have, however, turned the corner into
the era of post-modernity. Those "scientific"
orthodoxies of the industrial revolution, from the heroic myth of
Manifest Destiny to the virtual utopias of Internet culture, have
been unmasked as just another form of sacred storytelling.
Twentieth-century Christian apologists spent a lot of energy
trying to defend the Bible against the hostile attacks of
modernist skepticism. In the 21st century, we ought rather to
question the adequacy of these sacred surrogates that have
promised prosperity, power, and prestige, but delivered only
captivity and deepening anxiety.

It is a moment of great evangelistic opportunity for the
church, but in North America there is great uncertainty. The gulf
is growing between a secular majority who are either ambivalent
or hostile toward the scriptural tradition, and a fundamentalist
minority who cling to its "infallible authority" with
increasing vehemence. Left in an uncomfortable middle are a lot
of believers who, intimidated by modernity, have been fooled into
thinking our scriptural stories are just entertainment.

Many conservative Christians have become confused about the
biblical narratives, reducing them to morality tales for private
spirituality that ignore the public crises of violence and
poverty. Many liberals, meanwhile, more optimistic about
progress, have forgotten the stories altogether. Thus our
churches have been too often defenseless against the competing
sacred narratives of the dominant culture, from the official
pronouncements of the State Department to the packaged
infotainment of the six o'clock news, and from the seductive
fabulations of Hollywood to the puerile promises of Madison
Avenue.

Can we reach hearts and minds within and outside of the church
with the biblical good news that is older and deeper and wiser
than presidential press releases or commercial huckstering? I
suggest three ways we might re-engage the Bible for the next
generation. First we will have to recover it as a "people's
book" through practices of populist literacy. Second,
Christians will have to improve our willingness and ability to
discuss differing readings of scripture. Finally, we must more
faithfully embody our interpretations in order to make the Word
flesh in our world.

THERE IS AN ANCIENT story about King Josiah of Judah, who was
presiding over a remodeling of the temple and instituting some
economic reorganization (2 Kings 22). In the course of cleaning
out the basement of the temple, so to speak, someone stumbles
across an old manuscript, which turns out to be "a book of
the Law" (22:9). The king summons all his advisors to
interpret its meaning, but it is an obscure figureHuldah,
the wife of a "keeper of the wardrobe" (22:14)who
supplies an interpretation. Her reading presents a hard word of
judgment upon the king's and the community's apostasy, yet
promises renewal if the leadership has the courage and vision to
repent (22:15-20).

This account refers to the "appearance" of the book
of Deuteronomy that launched the Josianic reform, a major turning
point in the history of Israel. But it is germane to our
situation on two accounts. First, it serves as a fitting metaphor
for our own need to relocate and dust off the Bible, in order to
hear its hard-but-healing words to church and society. Every
major epoch of reform and renewal in the history of the church
has been animated by fresh, challenging, and controversial
rediscoveries and reappropriations of scripture, from the early
monastic movement to the Protestant Reformation, and from
19th-century abolitionism to recent liberation theology.

Second, the story suggests that the Bible should be
interpreted not by the rulers to the people, but vice versa.
People who live and work on the underside of
societymarginal figures like Huldahknow what bishops
and theologians conveniently forget: The Bible has the power to
pronounce the emperor naked.

Over the last three decades, base communities around the Third
World have re-animated regular folk to understand and apply the
stories of scripture. This movement, however, has not
"trickled up" significantly to the First World. Perhaps
this is because of our socialization into the culture of
spectating in our highly technological society. Our over-reliance
on experts, whether they are plumbers or politicians, have
rendered us passive. Our feelings of alienation or inadequacy
toward the Bible is perhaps due less to clericalismthough
that continues to be a problem in many Christian
traditionsthan to the modernist influence of academic
culture.

The guild of professional biblical scholarship feels
increasingly less accountability to living communities of faith
or a responsibility to translate their findings to the
"laity." Their complex linguistic, historical, and
literary methodologies confound regular church folk, convincing
many that they are not equipped to study the Bible on their own.
Others simply reject biblical criticism altogether and retrench
in simplisticif highly formulaicpopular Bible study
formats, blissfully ignorant of "hermeneutical
problems."

Throughout the ages this "people's book" keeps
getting expropriated by the expert scribal classes. Jesus himself
complained bitterly of this betrayal (Mark 2:25; 7:9; 12:24, 35).
It is true that the biblical stories originate in times and
cultures far removed from our own, and that we need to take
thoughtful care in our handling of these texts. It is also true,
however, that we all have a certain "narrative
competence" that enables us to interpret stories in
meaningful ways, using the power of imagination, experience, and
analogyno matter what our level of education.

If we are to err, let it be on the side of trusting our people
with these stories, because the Bible was written for and about
regular folk, especially the poor. A strategy of "populist
re-enfranchisement" must, of course, encourage disciplines
of study and reflection that will nurture biblical literacy. The
popular education techniques pioneered by Paulo Freire are
crucial here: starting with what we know, drawing from our
experience of the world, questioning and being questioned by
texts we are studying.

For example, we can start with cultural texts from our
worlda newspaper, a cartoon, an advertisementin order
to practice interpreting symbols, implied messages, or the
retelling of older stories. Regular people are in fact very
sophisticated in their ability to decipher the hieroglyphics of
modern media discourses. Such exercises will create positive
momentum that can carry over when we turn to cultural narratives
that are not as familiar to us, as is the case with the Bible.

With a little encouragement, we can learn to pay attention to
form as well as content in biblical literature, to genre, to
plot, character, and setting. We can become mindful of context,
including the relations of social power and whose voice is being
heard, both in the biblical text and in our world as readers.

Everyone can do thisand everyone's input is important.
Bible study is a community venture. Like any other discipline, it
takes practice, devotion, and commitment. We need to
learnand relearnour way around the whole of the
biblical narrative, especially the Old Testament. And we need to
keep the process fun, interactive, and in constant relationship
to our concrete situation. In populist Bible study we may get
things wrong, but we nevertheless have the rightand the
dutyto struggle with these texts.

A MAJOR DISINCENTIVE to populist Bible study is the experience
of seeing so much official disagreement about what the scriptures
say. We know too well the long and sometimes bloody history of
fighting or dividing over differing interpretations, seeing
Christians use the Bible to "excommunicate" (literally
or figuratively) their opponents.

It is a platitude that the Bible can be and has been invoked
to justify a myriad of doctrinal and ethical
positionsthough not, as skeptics assert, any and all
positions. Indeed, scripture is often used in both church and
society on different sides of a disputed issue, as is the case
currently, for example, regarding the rights of sexual
minorities. But this characteristic does not discredit the Bible,
because it is not unique to it. Any important cultural
textbeloved literature, legal documents,
treatiesbecomes the locus of interpretive struggle (think
of the use of the Constitution in the debate over American
segregation). This testifies to the enduring importance of such
texts, not to their irrelevance.

Of course the church can try (as it has before) to impose
unity from above, establishing the "orthodox" or
"scientific" readings as determined by ecclesial or
academic hierarchies. But the grassroots reality of the church
has always been pluralistic. African slaves in early 19th-century
America interpreted the Bible differently than their Protestant
masters. Similarly, late 20th-century Latin American Catholic
base communities read differently than do seminary-trained
members of the Roman magisterium. It is simply inevitable that
believers will employ different texts, different readings of the
same texts, and/or simply read the Bible differently.

But is this so bad? To be sure, biblical differences have
driven modern Protestant hermeneutics in two divergent
directions. Theological conservatives tend to have a high degree
of confidence that the Bible itself can adjudicate all doctrinal
and ethical disputeswhen "properly" interpreted.
Unfortunately, the correct interpretation is usually equated with
the conservatives' own positions, such that their commitment to
"biblical authority" too often ends up looking more
like a kind of biblical authoritarianism.

Theological liberals, on the other hand, tend to see so many
problems with the Bible and so much distance between the ancient
texts and the complex realities of modernity that they have
become diffident concerning scripture's relevance to current
debates.

Neither approach, however, resolves the problem. Suppressing
differences doesn't make them disappear; it only drives them
elsewhere. Abandoning the Bible only means that some other text
or tradition will be appealed toand then people will read
that differently! I believe we would do better to acknowledge and
accept the following apparent contradiction: 1) the Bible is our
foundational story, the church cannot do without it, and so must
continue to wrestle with the task of interpreting it; and 2) the
Bible will be read differently within the community of faith. To
affirm both means that Christians must earnestly seek guidance
from scripture and must learn how to talk about different
readings in constructive and respectful ways.

How can differences be so discussed? A given interpretation
must necessarily be argued with care (from the Latin arguere,
to make clear); after all, important issues are at stake. But we
also need the discipline of conversation (from the Middle English
conversen, meaning to associate with; also from the Latin conversus,
meaning to turn around). Conversation holds within it the
possibility of mutual conversion. This requires that partners
commit themselves to two disciplines.

Questioning in Community
First, each positional group must be willing to articulate and
to examine honestly the interests and values that underlie its
reading of scripture. The reality of "interpretive
interests" is recognized in scripture itself: A lawyer stood
up to test Jesus. "Teacher, what must I do to inherit
eternal life?" Jesus answered him, "In the Law, what is
written? How do you read it?" (Luke 10:26).

Jesus' counter-question seeks to investigate not only the
text, but the community of interpretation as well. In this case,
the lawyer cites the text (though Luke 10:27 is already a
conflation of Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18), but it is his
reading of that text that is at issuenamely his agnosticism
on the matter of who constitutes a "neighbor" (10:29).

No matter how passionate our viewpoint may be, we should
always remain open to others, because scripture itself is
multifaceted and further reflection or different perspectives may
yield a more compelling reading. After all, our contexts as
readers change through time and space. The biblical tradition was
itself in formation for a millennium and has engendered a rich
and diverse interpretive legacy for another two millennia. One
need only to study the history of the interpretation of any
biblical passage down through the centuries to see how contingent
our readings are.

The church has not been particularly well served by the long
and necessarily combative hermeneutic tradition (embraced both by
authoritarian conservatives and liberal academics) that assumes a
text has only one "correct" reading. Fortunately,
post-modernism has exposed the fallacy of claims to either
doctrinal or historical-critical objectivity. Women, ethnic
communities, and churches of the poor have offered readings that
not only reveal facets of scripture that white male academics and
clerics could never see, but that also unmask the hidden
interpretive interests of those professional classes!

Questing after (or insisting upon) the "one true
reading" is neither the only nor the best way to honor the
authority of scripture. Indeed it may concede too much power to
the interpreter. We Christians might do better to rediscover a
more Jewish approach. The rabbinic tradition, broadly speaking,
has seemed more comfortable with the notion that only a
multiplicity of approaches can do justice to the marvelously deep
and wide spectrum of meaning(s) in the sacred texts. This both
preserves the text as the center of the community and allows us
to offer our various interpretive efforts to the body for
discernment. This perspective is ritualized by Jews on the feast
of Simchat Torah, when the scrolls are taken by synagogue elders
into the middle of the congregation and held lovingly while
everyone dances in celebration around them. It always brings me
to tears.

Embracing pluralism does not preclude critical engagement with
other interpretive positions. There are matters of integrity and
justice at stake, and not all readings are benign or respectful.
After all, scripture acknowledges that even the devil can cite
scripture (Luke 4:9-12). Still, it is the responsibility of
readerly communities to guard against our natural tendency to use
texts to justify ourselves. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it,
Christians need to learn to read scripture "over against
ourselves" rather than simply "for ourselves."

Thus we must allow scripture to question, as well as to
support, the positions we take. "Is this not the reason you
are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of
God?" (Mark 12:24). Jesus' sharp query is addressed to all
of us, challenging us to move beyond rigid interpretive positions
and toward creative self-examination.

The best way to persuade others of our reading of scripture,
of course, is not by telling it, but by showing it. True biblical
interpretation is about convictions, not abstract opinions.
"Opinions are the stuff of debate and discussion,"
writes James McClendon. "They may require thought, but they
require no commitment. Convictions, on the other hand, are less
readily expressed but more tenaciously held.... They are our
persuasions, the beliefs we embody with some reason, guiding all
our thought, shaping our lives."

This means our conversations about scripture should focus on
our actual practices and what we are willing to live by, and
steer away from theoretical imperatives or what people in general
ought to do. A classic statement of this "epistemology of
embodiment" is found in the Lukan exchange between Jesus and
the lawyer referred to earlier. Twice the scribe gives Jesus the
"right" theory (Luke 10:27, 37a); twice Jesus responds
with an invitation to practice: "You have answered
correctly; do this and you will live" (10:28); "Go and
do likewise" (10:37b).

Postmodern America hardly needs more shrill opinionswe
have popular talk radio for that. The Bible invites us to join
Jesus in making the Word become flesh (John 1:1ff), exegeting the
text with our lives. "No one has ever seen God; the
Son...has made him known (Greek exegesato)" says John
1:18. "Unless Christian communities are committed to
embodying their scriptural interpretation," write Stephen
Fowl and Gregory Jones, "the Bible loses its character as
scripture." How does one argue that Jesus meant what he said
about love of enemies, or the last being first, or the way of the
cross, except by trying to experiment with such truth with our
own lives?

"Their evil is mighty," concludes Silko's elder,
"but it can't stand up to our stories." This native
wisdom is good theology for Christians. But only if we know our
stories, listen to one another in our quest to understand what
they require of us, and embody them in the world.

Ched Myers was a social activist and biblical theologian
with Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries in Los Angeles when this
article appeared.

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